


Myth-Heard Secrets

by Skulker



Category: Myth Adventures - Robert Asprin
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-07
Updated: 2017-06-07
Packaged: 2018-11-10 03:45:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11119233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skulker/pseuds/Skulker
Summary: Those who listen at keyholes seldom hear good of themselves. Skeeve hears a bit more than he bargained for.





	Myth-Heard Secrets

“Skeeve’s still a virgin?!”

Those who listen at keyholes seldom hear good of themselves, as the old saying goes. Still, I wasn’t at a keyhole – I’d picked up a few treats for Gleep on my way home and had headed straight out to the stables through our courtyard, thereby innocently passing the open window where the hot topics of the day were apparently being discussed. And as for ‘listening’, well Tanda had screeched that rather sensitive nugget of information so loud that every creature with ears in the bazaar at Deva (a good four fifths at least) was probably up to speed on the status of my love life.

This is the part where I should have tactfully carried on my way and let the conversation run its course without me, but…well, it’s hard not to be intrigued when a beautiful woman is interested in your virginity. This explained my current, rather inelegant situation: a stunned crouch beneath the window, hugging dragon kibble to my chest and alternately going red and white as my friends discussed this fascinating subject in depth.

“How old is he now? Twenty two?”

“About that,” Aahz answered her vaguely. Aahz! Just who I wouldn’t want in on this conversation. Looks like he hadn’t bought the little white lie I told him when we’d acquired our unicorn years ago. No doubt he’d have a few withering things to say on the subject, and my ears burned in anticipation.

“And he’s still a virgin after all these years with you?” she laughed. Normally I like Tanda’s merry laugh, but it didn’t seem to suit the gravity of the situation somehow. “You’re losing your touch in your old age.”

“Careful what you say or I’ll have to come over there and prove you wrong,” he growled playfully.

“Still, you need to get on with it!”

“Me?! Jeez, Tanda, you’re not usually one to the throw the kid to the lions. Surely you don’t expect me to handle that part of his education? I’d break him.” Privately, I shared his opinion. Aahz has given me excellent mentorship on many subjects, but my love life? I’d mentally chalked that one up on the list where Aahz’s advice is to be avoided at all costs, along with ‘cooking’. “Anyway,” he continued, “I was expecting you to handle it.”

I gulped so loud I nearly missed her reply.

“Well, you can’t say I haven’t tried. I’ve been flirting with him for years and he’s never shown a hint of initiative.”

“Of course he won’t, what were you expecting him to do? Remember he’s from Klah: the most backward, boring, country bumpkin dimension going. I think it’s just about permissible for a married couple to grimly submit to one teeth-clenched encounter in the missionary position on their wedding night. Under a sheet with the lights off. Perhaps. And, no offence, but even Skeeve can see you’re not the marrying kind.”

“I’m just waiting for the right man to make an honest woman of me, “she leered and they both laughed. I was stunned. Tanda was willing to…She wanted to…with me? ME? That was a turn up for the books. But at the same time, I felt a little aggrieved that she was disappointed with my lack of initiative in taking her up on her flirting. The woman flirts with everything with a pulse, surely she doesn’t want to sleep with them all? How was I supposed to know the difference?

This was really all the information I needed and I could have – should have- crept away now to digest this new perspective in private, but Tanda was continuing: “C’mon, surely we’ve broadened his mind a bit after all these years - he must have noticed everyone else gets it on without getting a contract for it. You’d have thought he’d have shown a little interest. If I’m too threatening, then at least with Bunny. She’d be harmless to him.” With Bunny! I felt my cheeks go hot. I’m fond of her, but no way would she be really interested in a guy like me. “Anyway, pass the wine.” There was a brief interlude while she apparently struggled to get the jug out of Aahz’s iorn grasp and fill her glass. Then, with sudden inspiration, she added, “Maybe he’s only into guys, did you think of that?”

I repressed a splutter only with effort. Tanda thought I might be…

“Tanda, his eyes practically fall out of his head every time you so much as lean over.”

Thank you, voice of reason!

“Well, he likes to look, sure. That doesn’t tell the whole story.”

“Don’t make it complicated. He’s shy around women. He’s shy around sex full stop.”

“That’s where you were supposed to come in,” Tanda chided. “How he’s got a hint of shyness left after living with you this whole time? You should be leading him.”

Did Tanda expect Aahz to set me up with women? Call me in for an educational tour mid tryst? Take me to brothels or something? _Not happening!_ I thought decisively.

“Not happening,” Aahz echoed. Sometimes my partner and I are on the same track, and I was relieved this was one of those times.

“Aw, why? You totally go for his type,” Tanda said lightly. To say I reeled is an understatement. Apparently my partner and I were not on the same track, because it suddenly sounded to me that we were talking about Aahz teaching me a bit more directly than going to a brothel. I felt my pulse pound in my temples.

“Because it’s not even occurred to him as a possibility,” Aahz said gruffly.

He was right, it hadn’t. Aahz’s type was tall, skinny blond men? Aahz’s type was _me?_ But the last time I checked, Aahz liked women. Didn’t he?

“Why not, being your roommate must have given him a little insight into life’s possibilities? Surely you bring some of your conquests back here? Or do you only bring the girls home?”

“I don’t bring anyone home,” Aahz said, lazily. “Never shit in your own back yard.”

Aahz liked men…and women? Don’t laugh at me but I’d always thought it was an either/or deal, I didn’t know it was even possible to do both.

He continued: “Anyway, however you look at it, I don’t think I’m the best choice for popping the kid’s cherry.” Did I go hot or did I go cold? I have no idea. Just like I had no idea what or where my cherry might be, but at that moment I felt more than slightly protective of it.

“Aw, nonsense. You might be a dirty rough bastard to everyone else, but you’re sweet on Skeeve. It’s adorable.” I felt sweat bead on my chest. That Tanda wanted to sleep with me was surprising enough, that Aahz wanted to do the same was unimaginable. Or at least it would have been if Tanda hadn’t continued, “why, I expect you’d be the perfect gent to your little apprentice, I bet you’d stare lovingly into his eyes while you gently opened his flower-”

There was brief commotion and some playful squealing as, I think – I hope- he picked her up and spanked her. It gave me time to put the pieces of my brain back together.

“Don’t be stupid. He’s my friend first, and one hint of that sort of thing and that’s our partnership down the drain. Not worth it. That’s why I keep my business on the down-low.”

“Give him more credit than that, Aahz.”

“Look, it’s not a slight on the kid. It’s just where he’s from. Men screwing in the beige farmlands of Klah? They’d probably expect to get struck by lightning.”

Actually, sodomy was supposedly punished by eternal torture in a fiery pit, but close enough.

Aahz continued, “I mean, I’ve never asked, but I think Skeeve can jerk off without having to whip the sin out of himself with a birch rod afterwards. That’s probably pretty good going for a Klahd. From that starting point, actual sex with a woman would be sin level, I don’t know, five or so. Fun sex with a woman would be a seven. Sex with a man would be around a ten. Sex with me,” you wouldn’t think you could hear someone gulp wine smugly, but indeed you can, “twenty.”

“Get out,” she laughed. “Fifteen at best.”

“Anyway, the point is, it doesn’t matter. He’s…special. I don’t know what it is, but he’s got that little spark to him that draws people in and he’s got me bad with it; I’d throw myself on a fire for the dumb schmuck-”

“And he’s slim and blonde and gazes at you with his big baby blue eyes that-”

He mercilessly cut her off, “but it’s just not going to happen. I figured that out years ago and, do you know what? It’s worked out pretty well. He wouldn’t be a random screw for me, you know, and how long do I manage anything serious before it all blows up my face? Six months?” there was a pause for wine, and for me to sink out of my crouch until I was sat on the cold ground where my trembling legs couldn’t distract me. “I don’t want to repeat all my old mistakes with him. I’m old enough to realise that now, but not so old that I wouldn’t do it all over again if he asked. I’m so relieved that he won’t ever.”

“Aw, Aahz.”

It was so strange to hear him talk about me like that. Sometimes I’ve wondered why he sticks around with me; I guess that’s why. He kinda loves me. Wow. Of course, I’m soft enough to know I love him too, but for me it’s always been the platonic kind of love which up until this precise moment I thought was literally the only option for a male, mammalian magician and his fearsome, reptilian mentor demon who is also, not incidently, male.

I swallowed hard.

If I asked, Aahz would be my lover…

“So there you have it. If he were amenable, I’d take him to bed; but he isn’t, so I won’t. I like him how he is.” He swigged wine. “So the ball’s, so to speak, in your court. If you want him divested of his virginity you’ll have to roll up your sleeves and do it yourself.”

“You know, I actually don’t know whether I want to or not, when it comes down to it. Like you say, I like him how he is. Skeeve’s such a sweetheart. Guys change when you sleep with them.”

I wouldn’t!

“As if Skeeve would!” My partner echoed.

“I don’t know, if you could tell they guys who were going to do it, it’d never happen. I mean, there must be a reason he’s never tried. Maybe you’re right, maybe he thinks sex is a dirty, filthy sin and he’d look down on me forever as a fallen woman.”

“Tanda, anyone with eyes is well aware you’ve not got far left to fall.”

“Anyway, I wouldn’t want to shack up with him forever. Just have a little fun now and then, and for that it’s not worth it. Like you, I’m happy and I don’t want to risk it.”

There was a pause while they apparently drank.

“Not wanting to risk it. That doesn’t sound like us, does it? Maybe we are getting old and sensible.”

“Maybe,” Tanda sighed. “You know what’s going to happen, don’t you? Some simple maid who’s a bit dull and non-intimidatingly pretty is going to sidle up while none of us are looking, and before you know it, he’ll be married up and that’ll be that.”

“Does sound like a hell of waste when you put it like that,” Aahz said, accompanied by the sound of claws drumming on something – probably his goblet. I had the mental image of the two of them staring into space, imagining seducing me. ME! Tanda, my head-turningly gorgeous assassin and source of a thousand surprises, no doubt leant over with her cleavage spilling from her top and her perfect mouth in a little frown of discontent, and Aahz my trusted mentor and confidant through a thousand scrapes, who I owe everything to and who I’d take and arrow for, probably lent back with his claws folded against his broad chest and his yellow eyes aglow. Both thinking about me in bed. I didn’t realise anyone had ever thought about me in bed, and that it was these two. Oh, god, I was…pleased. I was trembling, I was bathed in sweat, my temperature was through the roof, but I was pleased.

This was one of those moments where you can see a fork in the road ahead, and if you don’t take the course you’re scared to, you’ll spend the rest of your life nagged by what could have been.

But I needed to think this over! Tanda I could nearly get my head around, she had been an idle fantasy for years. Aahz… I had no idea what I wanted with him, but…god, I wanted something. I didn’t even find him attractive; the claws and fangs and...whatever it is a Pervect has in his pants…were prospects that were all more than slightly alarming to consider. But at the same time, the thought of him as my lover, looking at me seriously as a man, teaching me this the same way he’d taught me everything else…I wanted it. And I trusted him; he wouldn’t do anything I wasn’t ready for.

I’m such a coward about this stuff. If I didn’t do it now, I would never do it. But what was I supposed to do? Just pop up and say ‘hey guys’? I couldn’t! My legs wouldn’t work for one thing. Maybe I should just creep away – but then no doubt Aahz’s super sensitive ears would hear me and I’d be in exactly the same position as if I hadn’t-

Wait, Aahz’s hearing! Relief washed over me as I remembered that the man can hear someone cough three miles away. There was no way I could escape from this scenario even if I wanted to. I sagged with relief as the realisation sunk in; having the option removed from me was a weight off my shoulders. This was happening now; there was no way it couldn’t.

I shuffled noisily, expecting a taloned arm to immediately pluck me up from outside.

“It is a waste,” Tanda said.

“Yeah.”

“He’d be so sweet and shy in bed.”

Oh, god! I sniffed loudly, hoping Aahz would hear before Tanda went any further.

Aahz did not hear. In fact, he said “He’d only be shy at first. Then he’d be eager, and you’d have however many years of repressed desire on your hands.”

“Maybe, but I bet he’s one of those boys who’s oddly polite. The kind that says ‘thank you’ afterwards.”

“And ‘please’, too,” Aahz said with a chuckle.

I cleared my throat in the most theatrical manner.

“Ooh, I haven’t had anyone like that in so, so long, and I don’t know why. I love being the boss, and he’d be adorable.”

“Remember, though Tanda, he acts modest but he he’s pretty cocky deep down. He expects to be good at things, and to be fair to him, he usually is. Maybe you’d have those tables turned on you. Maybe you’d be the one saying ‘please’ and ‘thank you’.”

“Maybe you’d have them turned on _you,_ " she said playfully. “You act like you call the shots but he seems to have you pretty much wrapped around his little finger. He’d have you on your knees in no time.”

“I doubt it,” Aahz said, slurping wine noisily. How much wine had that deaf demon had, anyway?!

I cleared my throat again.

“Have you seen him naked?” Tanda asked.

That was it, my legs stood up of their own accord and suddenly I was looking at them framed in the window.

The effect was immediate.

They were sat together in a big armchair, Aahz actually in the chair with his arm round Tanda who was half on the armrest and half on his lap. Their expressions snapped from twin looks of amusement to frozen in an instant, and didn’t get any better as I climbed in the window. Tanda looked upset; Aahz…well, to say Aahz looked angry didn’t do it justice. His yellow eyes bore a look of cold fury that I’ve seen everywhere from battlefields to high-stakes crap games to duels to the death. I’d never seen it levelled at me before.

“Well,” Aahz said, draining his glass. “Didn’t think you were the type to listen at windows, Skeeve.”

I told myself: he’s not angry, he’s scared that you heard him. I had to tell myself that, because he sure sounded angry. In fact he sounded absolutely furious. Every word came out as a contemptuous snarl and hit me hard.

“It’s lucky that I do, because otherwise I wouldn’t know anything. You guys really leave me behind sometimes; you still treat me like a kid.”

“Skeeve,” Tanda said, her eyes flicking between me an Aahz. He didn’t seem to have anything else to say, and neither did I.

So I did the only thing I could think of – gathering up my courage, I strode across the room to the pair of them and then sat across from Tanda, half on the armrest and half in Aahz’s lap. After a brief hesitation, where his expression of surprise faded to that weird half smile he does when I’ve exceeded his expectations, his arm closed round me and pulled me close. This put my chin on line with the top of his head, which was good because it meant I didn’t have to look at either of them. God, I was nervous! My heart must be pounding against his ear.

“How much of that did you hear?”

“From Tanda broadcasting to the whole Bazaar that I’m a virgin,” I said. “Sorry. I just- I just didn’t know anyone had cared to notice about that and then I kinda heard too much.”

“And since you’ve heard our thoughts on the subject, do you want to share yours?”

“Um,” I said. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

He eased me forward so I met their gazes briefly – long enough for Aahz to quirk a scaly eyebrow at me - before finding a comfortable spot to examine on the floor.

“Now, you heard more than that from us,” Tanda said coaxingly, picking up my hands from my lap and squeezing them. “We’re far too talkative for our own good.” She was smiling, I could hear the smile in her voice. Aahz wasn’t so sure, I could tell. His arm around me was tense.

“I-” I said, then stuttered, embarrassed by the smallness of my voice. Still, they liked me shy, didn’t they? “I - I liked what I heard,”

“Did you, Handsome?” she said, and then leaned forward –half out of her dress- and planted a lingering kiss on my frozen lips. Tanda kissed me! I was too numb to enjoy any sensation from it – just to register the press of her lips against mine, but the knowledge alone was sweet. This was happening. This was happening!

I glanced up at Aahz, who was giving me a cool, calculating look. “Did you?” he asked.

I nodded. I lifted my chin up and he did the rest, not kissing me but, with a sudden flash of fangs that made me start, swiping his tongue across my mouth, leaving a lingering taste of wine when I automatically licked them dry. He gave me smouldering look of anticipation that made me swallow hard. Oh god, this was happening!

They shared a smile with one another that made me alarmed.

“You’ll have to go slow with me, both of you.”

“Sure,” they said, almost in unison.

Aahz gave me a slow, penetrating look. “One thing I have to say first, though,” he said seriously.

“Yes?” I gulped.

“Will you close the damn window?!”

Good point! Obediently, I reached out with my mind and slammed it shut.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
